There are probably as many definitions for cloud computing as there are internet experts. Rob Boothby posed this question to some of the better known web authorities at the recent Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

Catch a video of their responses below:

What do you think cloud computing is?

Fireman poles, slides, games rooms, aquariums and plenty of free food – all in a day’s work at Google apparently.

Have a look at this BBC clip to get a peek into Google’s wacky offices – certainly a far cry from the soul-sapping cubicle dreariness of most corporate offices.

According to Frank Gens – IDC’s VP of research – IT majors like IBM, Microsoft and HP are beginning to take Web 2.0 and on-demand technologies seriously. He expects these vendors to aggressively target the collaboration and business-oreitnted social networking space this year. Not surprising, given that more than 40% of enterprises are expected to have a social network deployed internally by year end.

IBM in January unveiled its revamped Lotus Web 2.0 platform – a suit of collaborative services that tap into the online content & social networking trend. Gens predicts that the company will soon crash the Software-as-a-Service party with Salesforce.com-style “cloud-based” solutions.

Microsoft has been aggressively promoting on-demand versions of its key enterprise solutions. Keen to have its cake and eat it too, Microsoft is adopting a “software-plus-service” strategy which adds collaborative online functionality to its traditional software products so as not to cannibalize its cash cow.

Of course, the Web 2.0 incumbents will not take this challenge lying down. Google and its ilk have been busy “corporatizing” their services and solutions.

Let the competition begin!

A US workplace survey commissioned by LexisNexis revealed the extent to which information overload is affecting white-collar knowledge workers in today’s work environments.

Some interesting findings from the survey:

• 89% of the average white-collar workday is spent conducting research, attending meetings, and searching for previously created documents;
• Knowledge workers spend an average of 2.3 hours daily conducting online research;
• 62% of professionals admit wasting a lot of time sifting through irrelevant information to find what they need;
• 75% of the respondents felt they were heading for an “information breaking point”.

My personal experience and anecdotal evidence suggest that knowledge workers in Singapore fare no better in resisting this information paralysis. Smart businesses would do well to better manage the information generated within and flowing through their organizations.

A well designed knowledge management system can be invaluable in ensuring that the right information is available to the relevant people at the proper time. The IT tools and services available today mean that even small businesses can afford to deploy powerful knowledge and learning systems that can help them thrive in this information-rich era.

The writing is on the wall – the global economy seems destined for a rough ride ahead. The US appears to be caught in an economic rut and Asia may not be quite as immune from the woes of the US economy as many are hoping.On the home front, a recent HSBC survey revealed that small businesses in Singapore are far less optimistic about the growth outlook than they were six months ago.

Not all that surprising, really, considering a recent Business Times report that Singapore appears to be loosing its competitive edge – mainly due to sharp increases in wages and other operating costs.In fact, Singapore is now ranked # 7 globally in a table of most expensive office rents compiled by real estate consultants Cushman & Wakefield with an average rental rate of SGD 185 per sq ft. Meanwhile, Singapore’s GDP shrank by 4.8% in Q4 of last year.So, how should a small business weather this “perfect storm”?

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company Salesforce.com’s latest release (Spring ‘08) will add Content Management and Collaboration features to its bag of tools. Salesforce.com also list 50 new features in its core CRM solution.

Many of these new features apparently started as ideas on the company’s own IdeaExchange forum.Salesforce Content is an interesting addition to the suite that uses social media concepts such as tagging, subscriptions and recommendations to allow users to manage unstructured content within the Salesforce environment.

Other recent networking concepts have been deployed within the Salesforce Ideas module to facilitate the management of communications and user feedback.It certainly is encouraging to see Salesforce.com taking the lead in turning popular innovations from the social networking sphere into tangible business oriented solutions.

Google has recently added some new features to Google Presentations, which is a component of the free Google Docs office suite. Google Presentations has the same basic features as Microsoft’s Powerpoint application, but lacks much of the professional polish and wow-factor of the latter.

Where the Google applications shine, though, is in their collaboration features. Multiple people can collaborate on creating a presentation and the finished product can easily be shared publicly or with an invited group. Major new feature include the ability to easily embed slide shows into web sites as well as drag-and-drop image insertion and slide importing.